Queenscrown Tourney - Crown of Blossoms (RP log)

Valcour Tyrell: The practice yards and fields surrounding Winterfell sang with the clash of steel and shouts of men as too many knights of Westeros and their respective squares, guards, bannermen, et cetera et alia spent their mornings before the tourney honing their skills. One knight, however, sat in the shade of a night dark evertree on the skirts of the godswood armorless and playing with flowers. The winter sunlight drew out the copper in his dark, jagged hair, head bowed and knee drawn up in a creaking riding boot. Dressed in black, as it was always black for Valcour, and the winter cloak he'd sprung out of a chest for this journey he made a vibrant shadow. The only color was the embroidery of emerald and gold at sleeves and collar and the bright blooms spilling around him.

Cilarys Targaryen: Princess Cilarys was hung over, dragged to wakefulness by shouts and clanging and driven downstairs and outside by a sudden and inexplicable need for fresh air. Once she'd taken a breath, though, and relieved that immediate desire, she realized that there was sun outside, glaring fire-orb in the sky, sending daggers through her eyes. Ugh. Squinting, she stumbled into the shade and flopped down, unladylike and a bit petulant. Her gown was dusty blue, her cloak indigo and lined with the white fur of a snow-fox. She fell backwards and stared up at dark branches, for a moment, silver-pale hair tumbling over grass and flowers. It was a long moment before she realized she was not alone. Her head rolled towards Valcour, and she smiled, wan. "How do you do, good ser. Forgive my intrusion. It was very... bright, over there." She extended a slender hand, palm down. "I am Cilarys Targaryen," she announced.

Valcour Tyrell: Valcour had been looking at her with a raised eyebrow an expression that was a cross between bemusement and annoyance, and now he looked at her extended hand. The lady did not have to tell him her name. He would have known her in a milkyard, or a haystack for that matter. "No you aren't," he informed her.

Cilarys Targaryen: Her brow furrowed - for a moment she thought he was saying that she was not, in fact, herself. That ought to have provoked a laugh in any case, and not a moment of genuine confusion - could he be right? Who was she, anyway? After all, hadn't she always felt like the image of Cilarys Targaryen, a simulacrum, somehow in place of the real thing? - but that was ridiculous. In the end, she forgot what he'd said altogether. "May I inquire of your name, Ser?" Maybe that would help her to be focused. Sane. Yes.

Valcour Tyrell: "You may inquire," he told her. "However the answer would fail to do you any good until you have decided who it is, exactly, you are. Understand, lady," thus did he shift, tilting towards her somewhat with the nearly complete wreath of downiniga and shootingstar in his hands that clever fingers worked at even as he spoke, long and drawling and calloused. Fingers and voice. "That I have met a princess or two in my time and Cilarys Targaryen who you claim to be is a princess as the first child and daughter of the step-down generation of Targaryens. Princesses do not intrude, they grace with their presences. If by some change they so happen to intrude anyway, they do not ask forgiveness unless the person they are asking is a god or their graces the king and queen." A beat and darkest gold eyes fixed upon her. The corners of mouth were dented in with suppressed humor.

Cilarys Targaryen: At another moment, she might have objected to perceived censure or actual teasing. At the moment, though, she was genuinely concerned as to her identity. It would likely read as humor rather than madness when her lips pursed pensively. "Perhaps you are correct, and I am not Cilarys Targaryen at all. Alas, though, if not she, who am I?"

Valcour Tyrell: "I'm afraid that is not a question I can answer, m'lady," Valcour told her gravely. The man could have been serious, and he could have been in his uppermost of wit. It was, as ever, difficult to tell with the man so oft were his jokes double and even triple bladed. "It is a question only you can answer, but I would suggest that as it is Cilarys Targarygen you believe yourself to be, you ought start with figuring out who she is."

Cilarys Targaryen: She sat up then, suddenly, to peer at him with sharp violet eyes. "That's just the trouble," she confided. "I don't really believe that I am she. Or she is me. Or..." Her gaze drifted off, landed on an attractive squire. But he was not so lovely as her Viserys... Yes, she must be Cilarys, because she loved Viserys and he belonged to her. She'd been afraid, last night, to go to him, and so she'd gone to a bottle of wine instead, and so found herself hung over. "Cilarys is a pleasant enough name, I suppose."

Valcour Tyrell: A petal was plucked absently from the black velvet nasturtium bunch pinned to his sleeve in the Tyrell fashion, black for it being Valcour. The small, soft petal was popped into his pinch of fingers to be held up for her in offering. "For the taste," he explained. It was a fire herb, this flower, peppery sweet to taste and cleansing as well. "It's a lovely name, yes, and fortunately not nearly so difficult on the tongue as many Targaryen names. If you aren't certain what you believe regarding yourself, lady, might I make a suggestion?"

Cilarys Targaryen: "By all means," she made a permissive gesture, haughty and elegant at once, a smile faint on her lips suggesting she thought the whole thing a lovely jest - in truth she was just amused at the idea that someone else might have something to say on that question that had troubled her since first she'd looked into a mirror.

Valcour Tyrell: "You aren't going to taste?" An eyebrow swept up and he delicately tore a small piece from the plucked petal to crumble into his own mouth in demonstatration that, indeed, he was no poisoner. The remains of the petal remained on his palm in offering to her. "First you must decide what attributes you find to be most admirable. Not in yourself," he defined, "but in general."

Cilarys Targaryen: Eyes with all the depth of a mirror drifted to the petal, and hesitant fingers reached out. She lifted it from his palm, peered at it, seeming almost indifferent. Then a bit was torn, as he'd torn it, and placed upon her tongue. For a moment she simply sat there, looking up, as if waiting for the flower to impart to her the answer to the knight's question. Then she swallowed, and looked to him, and spoke. "Capacity," she answered. "The capacity to feel, to be, to determine oneself and stand out against this... sea." A wide armed gesture punctuated the sentiment.

Valcour Tyrell: "Very good," he praised her in a solemn drawl. The corners of his eyes were crinkled with something of humor, but the eyes themselves remained dark as a tarnished and ancient Braavosi coin. "Now what is it you wish to feel, to be, and to stand out as?"

Cilarys Targaryen: Her laugh was musical, light and airy and utterly unsuited to her. "Oh, Ser, it hardly matters. I cannot do those things," simple though they seemed at first glance. "My brother can." Deepest envy. She gave a delicate shudder. "My, but the north is cold. How do you think they stand it? It's nigh unlivable!" A glance to him, to reassure herself that he was no northman - but of course, his voice had given him away.

Valcour Tyrell: Chivalry was not dead, but Valcour Tyrell was a man who had grown up beneath the noonday sun surrounded by gold sand, lush fields, and bright colors of marches of the summer lords. He eyed her for a couple of beats too long before laying the wreath in grass beside him in order to work free the intricate emerald and gold clasp of his cloak. So in short order the rich black cloak scented of dust and sun, spices and roses was billowed out and settled over the narrow shoulders of a princess as he learned forward. "Why can't you?" He was not ready to be derailed.

Cilarys Targaryen: The look she leveled at him was inscrutable. He'd derailed her derailment, and she couldn't very well pout at him for lending her his cloak. It smelled pleasant, she decided. Perhaps that was from the flowers of which he seemed to be so fond. She lifted her shoulders in what might have been the slightest of shrugs, or might have been an attempt to settle the garment more comfortably about her. "You are very chivalrous, Ser," said the girl who might or might not have been Cilarys Targaryen. "And I've never been able to do as you say. Well, that's not entirely true." Come to think of it, the sun was not so bright as she'd imagined. And several of the knights were very comely indeed, including the one to whom she spoke. How pleasant.

Valcour Tyrell: "You've never been able to feel or to be or to stand out?" That was said with a grain or three of incredulity and he well might have been mocking her. Some people might have thought he was easily. Truth was he was making his first study of her, this Cilarys Targaryen, and ascertaining not so much who she was as who she was to him.

Cilarys Targaryen: Too close to dangerous territory... indeed, she'd been dancing on the edge of things best left unrevealed for some time now. She smiled, still inscrutable, and for once she meant it to be so. "Perhaps I exaggerate, Ser," she conceded, but her tone suggested otherwise. "Surely I am, for I am sitting here under this tree."

Valcour Tyrell: "Perhaps I ought rephrase." The man was unrelenting in that dark, steady drawl. A shootingstar was primed for the last weave with the curve of his index finger and he, watching her, complete the flower wreath blind. (completed) "What is it you want to feel and to be?"

Cilarys Targaryen: "You've asked that once before," she noted, as if it were a misstep in a dance, which perhaps it was. "I'll pick something, then, if it helps," but it would only be for the sake of example, clearly. "Glory, say. Or contentment. Or rage." She studied the wreath, trying to work out how it pieced together but she could not, any more than she could look into a mirror and make sense of what lay behind her mirrored eyes. "That's a lovely wreath," she noted.

Valcour Tyrell: "You failed to answer it once before," he pointed out, gently stubborn. "As you have now for a second time. It is not a question to which you pick an answer, but the sort to which you confess an answer. Should I ask it of you a third time, Cilarys Targaryen, daughter of Rhaethys and Naerys, I advise you to remember that." The wreath was lifted then for a study, mouth twisting down as he turned it slowly about, and at length nodded. Gold eyes met her own as he leaned forward to settle the wreath (which now was realized for the crown it was in all it's delicate hues of orchid and hyacinth and julep) atop her head. "Now it is lovely, Your Grace."

Cilarys Targaryen: She smiled prettily, the chivalric gesture enough to calm the dragonfire that threatened to rise in her at the censure that preceded it. "Perhaps, Ser, you may consider that confessing is what I've been doing, and reevaluate my reluctance to go on speaking of such things with a man who has yet to tell me his name," she reminded him. "Though he seems to be a very gallant sort of knight, and pleasant company."

Valcour Tyrell: "Truth told he is not very gallant at all, hardly a knight, but has of recent been referred to as amusing company which is, of course, better than nothing." A bladed smile rose, his first of their encounter, and it rewarded it's viewer. "If I told you my name, Cilarys, would you go on confessing? Or would I then become too defined and real to speak with so plainly in the light of day?"

Cilarys Targaryen: There was that laugh again, and as genuine as it seemed it never touched her eyes. "Clever, then, if not gallant. Very well, remain a ghost. Look at my eyes, Ghost. What is it you see there?" She wondered, her voice teasing, her eyes mirrors.

Valcour Tyrell: A hand lifted so that he might whisper the tip of a finger down the delicate prickling of a petal floating drowsily from her flower crown. "Shootingstar," he murmured, "and a ghost."

Cilarys Targaryen: "And there you have the answer to all your questions, why it is that I am not so certain of this Cilarys Targaryen figure. Certainly she seems to be there. She rides a dragon, they say - her father's dragon, that came to her when he died, and who is his heir, then? But I do not resent my brother. He will be a great king." And she would see to it. "Your accent is of the Reach."

Valcour Tyrell: "Is it? I suppose I could be of the Reach," a flicker of a grin as startling, brief, and bright as heat lightning. "There is ever only one heir, I've learned," he told her almost casually, but there was the faintest inflection to it that spoke of a dirt of his own land, a soiling matter of the self; but, then, that would be for the observant and interested. "A fact of life to which there is no option but to settle or to war and, I imagine, Cilarys --" So informal, this man, and audacious. "Even dragons do not dance well with dragons."

Cilarys Targaryen: "We dance well in feast-halls and ballrooms, Ghost-from-the-Reach," she noted. "We dance well together, but not against one another. Surely we've all seen enough fratricide for one lifetime." Her voice was cool, and not quite arch - he'd come very near to accusing her of something dreadful. "Besides," she smiled. "I love my little brother."

Valcour Tyrell: He studied her in the shadows of the godswood, his smile no less bright for it's sharpening. Yet he said nothing to that, in the end, for their words had crossed like swords in this winter light, on accident and with misspent aim. "Who shall you cheer on in the tourney, Your Grace?" No more was it merely "Cilarys", for even Valcour Tyrell knew better than to push his wit too far with a displeased dragon.

Cilarys Targaryen: "Ser Alistair Arryn," she replied easily. "He's Lord Commander of my grandfather's Kingsguard and my brother is his squire. And you? The Tyrell heir, I suppose, coming from the Reach." An easy assumption. "Or will you be competing yourself, Ghost?"

Valcour Tyrell: "Ghosts are but impressions on the conscience by the hands that had them killed, my lady," he replied, his voice too glib for his words as he stretched lazily back against the tree trunk to cross one ankle atop the other. "They do not fight in tournies. You are correct, however; should I cheer, I imagine it will be for the Tyrell heir. Maybe, just to be contrary, for the Princess of Dorne as well as I hear that she will be competing in the archery contest."

Cilarys Targaryen: "Who have I killed, I wonder?" She mused, and plucked a blade of grass from the ground to roll between her fingers, idly. "Ceren will win at archery, I'm sure of it. I'd forgotten - she's my exception. But Ser Alistair may lose at archery with his honor unscathed - indeed, it's the chivalrous thing to do. And Ceren is royalty, if foreign royalty, after all." She was nearly bubbling, now, to speak of her friend. "Have you met the Dornish princess? She's fantastic fun, and so graceful." But then, Cilarys had no idea if her ghost were of rank enough to speak to a princess. She could very well be creating a scandal right there.

Valcour Tyrell: "Briefly," came the confession. "All Graces must be graceful, Cilaryes. I believe it's in the rule book somewhere. She is a friend of your's then?"

Cilarys Targaryen: "Oh yes. She came to court several weeks ago and we've had a lovely time of it. She's teaching me to wield a bow, and I am teaching her to ride dragons." A much less common skill, that.

Valcour Tyrell: An abrupt laugh lit the air like starworts. "You'reteaching a Martell to ride dragons?" That struck him as impossibly amusing and his laughter lingered, nettling bright as he shook his head. "Tell me, princess, is she any good at it?"

Cilarys Targaryen: Cilarys shrugged, almost coquettish. "She's all right, for a Martell, I suppose. Of course she cannot go on her own, no dragon would have it. They're particular creatures. I could not ride my brother's dragon, see, nor he mine. But as to how the dragons choose their companions, not even I quite unserstand." She was fairly certain her little sister did, though.

Valcour Tyrell: "They are as particular," Valcour theorized, "as their riders." A sidewinding grin winked his teasing of her.

Cilarys Targaryen: "Oh, quite," she agreed, smiling. They were as incestuous, too, but that did not strike Cilarys as a detriment. A moment's silence, and her smile fell slightly. "Do you think, Ghost, that we have moved far enough away from dangerous confessions for you to share with me your name?" But why so serious? It couldn't possibly be the niggling fear that he was indeed simply an impression upon her, and she'd spent the early morning talking to thin air.

Valcour Tyrell: A sidelong study was made of her for this, and he murmured, "And I here I thought, Cilarys, we had learned this morning that the name is nothing without the self." Only then his smile writ itself into place, laughing somewhere in silence at everything, perhaps, and he inclined his head from his lounge. "I am Valcour Tyrell, Your Grace, and no ghost yet."

Cilarys Targaryen: Aha! "I knew you were a man of the reach," she noted, and another piece clicked into place. "And a second son, too." Her head tilted slightly to one side. "If you will not compete at tourney, Lord Valcour, would you sit then with me and my family? The Joust will inevitably grow dull, without good company."

Valcour Tyrell: The invitation appeared to surprise him, as well it might, but after a moment his laugh came again. This time it was as a chuckle as he straightened from his slouch to extend a hand and adjust her crown of flowers most charmingly atop her silvery-gold head. "It would be an honor to observe the tourney with the great Targaryen family, not the least of which yourself. I accept and hope that my court jestering shall amuse rather than annoy."

Cilarys Targaryen: "Oh, wonderful!" She clapped her hands together, delighted. "The princess Ceren will likely join us too, you know." And perhaps her ghost's wit would lure her away, and Viserys would not be so drawn to her... "Yes, it promises to be an excellent tourney."

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